ted
child crawling upon the side-pave, or seeking a crust to appease its
hunger--all are found here, gasping, in rags, a breath of air by day, or
seeking a shelter, at night, in dens so abject that the world can
furnish no counterpart. And this forlorn picture of dilapidated houses,
half-clad, squabbish women, blistered-faced men, and sickly children,
the house of the Nine Nations overlooks. And yet this house, to the
disgrace of an opulent people be it said, is but the sample of an
hundred others standing in the same neighborhood.

[Footnote 4: Now Worth street and Mission Place.]

With its basement-doors opening into its bottomless pit; with its
continual outgoing and ingoing of sooty and cruel-visaged denizens; with
its rickety old steps leading to the second story; with its battered
windows, begrimed walls, demolished shutters, clapboards hanging at
sixes and sevens--with its suspicious aspect;--there it stands, with its
distained sign over the doors of its bottomless pit. You may read on
this sign, that a gentleman from Ireland, who for convenience' sake we
will call Mr. Krone, is licensed to sell imported and other liquors.

Indeed the house of the Nine Nations would seem to say within itself: "I
am mother of this banquet of death you behold with your eyes." There it
stands, its stream of poison hurrying its victims to the grave; its
little dark passages leading to curious hiding-places; its caving roof,
and its ominous-looking back platform, overlooking the dead walls of
Murderers' Yard. How it mocks your philanthropy, your regal edifices,
your boasted charities--your gorgeous churches! Everybody but the
corporation knows the house of the Nine Nations, a haunt for wasted
prostitutes, assassins, burglars, thieves--every grade of criminals
known to depraved nature. The corporation would seem either to have a
charming sympathy for it, or to look upon it with that good-natured
indifference so happily illustrated while eating its oysters and
drinking its whiskey. An empty-headed corporation is sure always to
have its hands very full, which is the case with yours at this moment.
Having the people's money to waste, its own ambition to serve, and its
hat to fill with political waste paper--what more would you ask of it?

The man of the house of the Nine Nations, you ought to know, makes
criminals by the hundred, deluges your alms houses with paupers, and
makes your Potters' field reek with his victims: for this he is